While all was lamentation and despair about him, and the several churches were thronged with persons offering up prayers for the preservation of the condemned noble, the King coldly issued his orders for the execution, only conceding, as a special favour, that it should take place in the court of the Hôtel-de-Ville, and that the hands of the prisoner should not be tied.[184] Thus, on the 30th of October, the very day of his trial, perished Henri de Montmorency, who died as he had lived, worthy of the great name which had been bequeathed to him by a long line of ancestry, and mourned by all classes in the kingdom. The unfortunate Marie de Medicis, who received constant intelligence of the movements of the rebel army, had wept bitter tears over the reverses of her errant son; but she had no sooner ascertained that by the Treaty of Béziers he had pledged himself to abandon her interests, than her grief was replaced by indignation, and she complained vehemently of the treachery to which she had been subjected. With her usual amiability, the Archduchess Isabella sought by every means in her power to tranquillize her mind, representing with some reason that the apparent want of affection and respect exhibited by Gaston on that occasion had probably been forced upon him by the danger of his own position, and entreating that she would at least suffer the Prince to justify himself before she condemned him for an act to which he was in all probability compelled by circumstances. But the iron had entered into the mother's soul, and the death of the Comtesse du Fargis, which shortly afterwards took place, added another pang to those which she had already endured. The beautiful lady of honour had never been seen to smile since she was made acquainted with the fact of her mock trial and her execution in effigy in one of the public thoroughfares of Paris. The disgrace which, as she believed, would thenceforward attach to her name, not only wounded her sense of womanly dignity, but also broke her heart, and a rapid consumption deprived the unhappy Queen-mother of one of the most devoted of her friends.